Bstanley
DisNoid
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2001
- Messages
- 1,241
So I was experimenting with ISO 6400 on the new camera - totally blown away by the ability to take pictures in very dim conditions. The picture below was taken from about 6 feet away in a 10x10 room with only the light of a 24" LED backlit monitor being reflected off a light yellow wall back toward the bookcase - it was dark enough I couldn't see the text clearly with the naked eye. I was even surprised the camera was able to focus - I am really looking forward to visiting The World. 
Canon 60D - ISO 6400 - 1/10 - f2.8 - 17-55mm EF-S @ 55mm - RAW
Here's approx a 2:1 crop of the original image (not zoomed in all the way) - obviously noisy, but not terrible:
I recently began using Lightroom - wonderful software by the way - so I thought I would compare Lightroom noise reduction to Topaz noise reduction. Here is a similar crop using Lightroom's noise reduction with a Luminance setting of 75% - good enough for me!;
Here is Topaz using the default 'Strong' 'JPG setting - loses a bit of sharpness compared to Lightroom;
Clearly both Lightroom and Topaz are capable of cleaning up an ISO 6400 shot to the point where it is quite usable. With further tweaking their output would look even better than the samples above where I made no adjustments to the lighting/contrast/etc. And finally considering I was in a room where I couldn't clearly see what I was taking a picture of it was VERY kewl that a usable picture was possible at all.
I can't imagine how dark it would need to get for someone to use an ISO of 102,000
PS - one interesting note - the file size of the original .JPG file was roughly twice the size of the either of the noise reduced .JPG files.
Edited to add the Lightroom 75% noise reduced full size image;
Canon 60D - ISO 6400 - 1/10 - f2.8 - 17-55mm EF-S @ 55mm - RAW
Here's approx a 2:1 crop of the original image (not zoomed in all the way) - obviously noisy, but not terrible:
I recently began using Lightroom - wonderful software by the way - so I thought I would compare Lightroom noise reduction to Topaz noise reduction. Here is a similar crop using Lightroom's noise reduction with a Luminance setting of 75% - good enough for me!;
Here is Topaz using the default 'Strong' 'JPG setting - loses a bit of sharpness compared to Lightroom;
Clearly both Lightroom and Topaz are capable of cleaning up an ISO 6400 shot to the point where it is quite usable. With further tweaking their output would look even better than the samples above where I made no adjustments to the lighting/contrast/etc. And finally considering I was in a room where I couldn't clearly see what I was taking a picture of it was VERY kewl that a usable picture was possible at all.
I can't imagine how dark it would need to get for someone to use an ISO of 102,000
PS - one interesting note - the file size of the original .JPG file was roughly twice the size of the either of the noise reduced .JPG files.
Edited to add the Lightroom 75% noise reduced full size image;
